The two teams share a close bond. In June, some of the Dublin crew
relocated to Reykjavik, Iceland, to train, with the Mjolnir crew
then returning the favor by basing themselves in Dublin from early
July.

The younger Nelson has spent much of this camp training with
Conor
McGregor, Cathal
Pendred and Paddy Holohan, the three SBG Ireland talents who
will be fighting in front of their hometown crowd this
Saturday.

“Gunni came here on July 2. Before that, John [Kavanagh] for the
whole of June with Conor and Cathal. We had about a dozen guys
here, then Karl [Tanswell of SBG Manchester] came over with [Cage
Warriors welterweight] Matt Inman
and Martin
Stapleton from his gym,” Haraldur said.

“All in all, we had about twenty guys -- maybe some of them stayed
for the whole of June and the rest for shorter periods,” he added.
“So we had a great camp in Iceland and then we came over to Ireland
to finish off the camp in Dublin. We had a great camp for this
fight.”

Saturday will be Gunnar’s fourth fight for the UFC and his second
of this year. He is 3-0 in the organization with two wins inside
the distance. He goes into this weekend’s fight with Zak
Cummings off the back of a March submission win over Omari
Akhmedov.

In recent years there has been a trend for European fighters to
relocate to the U.S. once their UFC careers begin to take off.
Michael
Bisping now lives on Los Angeles, Dan Hardy
spent several years living in Las Vegas and Ross
Pearson has trained extensively with the Team Alliance outfit
in San Diego.

According to Haraldur, Saturday night will be a declaration to the
world that, at least as far as Mjolnir and SBG Ireland fighters are
concerned, they have world-class training right where they need it:
at home.

“I think John
Kavanagh is the best MMA coach in the world. I don’t see any
reason why we should go to America for training. When we have guys
like we have here -- John and his team -- there is no need. We will
go to the States if we want to, but only because we want to, not
because we need to,” he said. “You go somewhere, you pick something
up, you work with new bodies and learn new things for your game. I
don’t see it as being necessary, going to train in America just
because he will be facing American fighters.”

Before Cummings, the 25-year-old Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt was
originally scheduled to face Ryan
LaFlare. However, an injury forced LaFlare off the card. A
veteran of “The Ultimate Fighter 17,” Cummings enters Saturday’s
co-main event on a four-fight winning streak, including triumphs
over Ben
Alloway and Yan Cabral in
the Octagon.

The change in matchup did little to affect Gunnar’s preparation,
his father said.

“[Gunnar] doesn’t train for specific opponents; he just trains to
be better than himself. And all of John
Kavanagh’s guys do that,” he said. “We are not concentrating on
the opponent, because that can change any day. Gunnar trains to get
his game better and to be ready for whatever comes up.”

No matter what the future holds, Haraldur does not expect Gunnar
will ever need to make a full-time move to the U.S.

“Do we benefit from trips to the States? Certainly. But we would
also benefit from Thailand or anywhere else there are good
fighters,” he said. “Obviously in the States there are massive gyms
with good fighters, lots of training partners. Gunni trained with
Renzo [Gracie} quite a bit, though not for this fight and not for a
while now actually.

“To be honest, this is the best training camp we have ever had, and
it was done mostly in Iceland. Then we came over to finish off at
SBG Ireland, and that was the icing on the cake. Everything is so
ready. Him and Conor and Cathal and Paddy are going to make a
statement on Saturday night.”